The Immortal American (The Immortal American Series) (39 page)

“Why’d they do this, anyway? Why’d they pick a fight with us? I ain’t never wanted to do anything but have me a farm and not be a virgin.”

“What noble pursuits.”

He winked at me. “You willin’ to help me out with any of that?”

I sniffed and tilted my head to the sky. “You know, being that I am now a married woman, I can own a little land, and give it away. I’ll talk to Mathew and see what we can do for you.”

He pushed me in the shoulder and bore a huge lazy smile.

Mr. Whitley, while crouching low, walked to where Sam and I were sitting.

“You get enough to eat, Vi?” Mr. Whitley asked.

“How come you don’t ask me, Mr. Whitley? Ain’t I as pretty as Vi for you to worry about what’s in my belly?” Sam kept his smile, even through all the booms from the Regulars’ cannon.

Mr. Whitley looked Sam over and said with a straight face, “No.”

“Damnation, I think I’m just as pretty as Vi.”

I rolled my eyes at Sam and nodded to Mr. Whitley. Mr. Whitley was a lieutenant of the Acton Militia, but more than that he was in charge of the sharp shooters and had just gained another brick of men from Sudbury who had lost their Ranger commander. I had become one of his men in the last three hours, since Sam had snatched me while I was running away from Jacque.

Mr. Whitley, either not really listening or thinking it gentile, gave me another slice of bread and ten rings of dried apple.

“Really, sir, I don’t need any more.” I tried to give it back, but Mr. Whitley, stubborn man, refused to look at me or take the food.

I divided the bread and apple rings in half and gave it to Sam, who began to eat at the dried apples–with a grin, of course.

Mr. Whitley took in a huge breath. “We’re going all the way to Boston.”

“Damn,” Sam said through a mouthful.

“Watch your mouth in front of the lady,” Mr. Whitley chastised.

I sighed and how I hated my shaking voice while I said it, but I had to, to gain some sort of equal respectability in Mr. Whitley’s eyes. “Yes, Sam, quit fucking swearing around me.”

Sam snorted and clapped me on the back with a loud thud. “That’s it. I have to marry you now. God, I love you.”

Even Mr. Whitley wore a small smile, but he began to frown when he said, “She’s already married, kid. Which reminds me,” he turned to me, the lines on his face cracking and adding more stress on his already tense face, “I told Colonel Barrett I picked up another man. I didn’t want to tell him who, but he insisted I say. I told him to keep it in confidence, but, God damn it, when I was making my way over to the two of you, I saw Colonel Barrett talking to your husband, Vi.”

“Oh, no.” I sighed.

“You going to eat the rest of your bread?”

On default I handed the half slice to Sam, wondering if Mathew was coming to yell at me and order me to go home. Out of the periphery of my eye I saw the rest of the brick that Mr. Whitely commanded start to group around us, perhaps to join in the rally to keep me aboard this enterprise, perhaps they were a bunch of gossips, I don’t know.

Mr. Whitely smiled at Sam, I think despite himself, and Sam just shrugged. “We’ll just tell Adams she’s too good not to be with us. We need her, right?”

Mr. Whitely frowned and sat down on a group of green ferns.

“We’ll tell Adams she needs to be with us,” Sam repeated, losing his smile, and taking an edge of defiance in his tone.

“I’m not one to meddle in a marriage, kid.” Mr. Whitely finally let his brown eyes meet mine, looking like a man in the middle of an estate hearing.

“Hell, this ain’t about a marriage,” Sam said. “This is about needing all good men, er, and a woman, I guess, to help with fighting these redcoats. This is about getting our rights back as Englishmen. This is about making a stand, like Adams said.”

“Yes, I did,” Mathew said, making all of us jump.

Mathew smiled down at us. We stood, then heard the loud boom of another cannon being fired somewhere into oblivion. We all shrank from the impact of the noise, then smiled at each other sheepishly.

Mathew clutched onto my wrist and pulled me into his arms. He chuckled softly while he retrieved a handkerchief and wiped at my face.

“Gunpowder?” he asked as he showed me the black markings on his white linen kerchief.

I nodded.

He shook his head. “I should have known it was you, watching over me. Has she told you about the time I tried to prove my manliness to her by taking her on a hunting expedition?” Mathew asked of my fellow sniper comrades.

They all shook their heads while Mathew sat down within the circle of men with me on his lap. He’d never been so affectionate nor so jolly in his life as he was in this moment. His face shone brightly, and he had a smile almost as big as Sam’s. He had made such a great speech, and lifted the spirits of thousands of men, and dampened almost seven-hundred souls in that one outburst of his.

I knew it then, he was destined to become a politician, like his distant cousins, Samuel and John. Lord, but I didn’t want to be a politician’s wife. Namely I didn’t want the lifestyle, but on the other hand, I would do anything for the man whose warm legs I was sitting on.

“Well, I was eighteen, and you were, what, fifteen?”

I nodded and smiled.

“I knew that her father had taken her hunting, as he’d bragged about it, but I thought I could prove what a man I was to her by taking her on our own hunting trip close to the hollow where that cold water spring is and all the Dutch seemed to have settled there. What is that hollow called?”

Mr. Whitley responded and Mathew nodded. “Right. I decided to take her there, a most romantic spot was my reasoning, when a huge elk runs from the woods straight toward us. My chance to prove myself to my love, I think. Only, I’m shaking because I’ve never shot at anything so big, and truthfully I was just thinking about what kind of petticoat she was wearing that day.”

At that all the men started to laugh. I blushed and hid my face in Mathew’s shoulder.

Mathew proceeded. “So, I blunder and shoot wildly. I wasn’t even holding my musket correctly, and had packed too much powder in the pan. The recoil knocked me asunder and flat on my back.”

The men laughed harder at this.

“There I am, on my ass, this wild, gargantuan stag coming to kill the love of my life and me, and then, she rips the musket from my fingers, reloads the rifle in a second’s time, and on the most sturdy yet feminine legs, she shoots the elk, square between the eyes.”

Some of the men were tearing up they were laughing so hard by that time.

“I asked her to marry me on the spot,” Mathew said on a calm sweet voice. “It only took three years for her to say yes, if you can believe that.”

Sam clapped Mathew on the shoulder while wiping at his eyes. In just one day’s time, Mathew had become a demigod in the militia, and I saw it right there. He was humble and humorous, spirited and intelligent, passionate and articulate. With him, the men would feel safe and virtuous about what they were doing. With him, the militia would stay strong and have high morale. With Mathew, there was a promise of a bright future.

Mathew’s grin dimmed. “May I speak with this sniper, my beautiful bride, in privacy, please.”

All the men around me, uncomfortably started to move, but did not leave. Finally, Mr. Whitely said, “Lord help me, but Lieutenant Adams, I need her. I don’t want her to go home. Not yet, at least.”

Mathew’s grip on my waist tightened. “I can understand, but—”

“I’ll vouch for her safety, sir.”

“Lieutenant Whitely—” 

Mathew was interrupted by Sam this time. “Sir, I’ll guarantee her safety as well. I’ll take a bullet before she ever does.”

I began to shake my head, but soon I heard the murmurings of all the men around me agree to put their life before mine. I was moved to the point of tears, and didn’t know if I should smack all of them upside the head, imprecate, or just cry in gratitude.

“I can understand. I do,” Mathew said slowly and calmly. “But I want my wife to be home and safe.”

“No,” I said softly.

Mathew straightened and looked down at me surprised and perhaps a bit hurt I would openly defy him.

I couldn’t contain my emotions, and began to cry. “I’m sorry, husband, to be so disrespectful in front of an audience, but don’t you see? It’s not my home without you. I won’t step one foot in that house without you. I can’t do it. I need you. You’re . . . my . . . everything.”

Men cleared their throats, and sniffed, as Mathew’s eyes began to glisten with tears of his own.

He shook his head, but then slowly began the oscillation into nodding. “Fine. Stay. As long we stay in ambush or sniper mode. If we ever turn into . . . firing lines or hand-to-hand combat, you run like hell for the hills, you hear me?”

I nodded and smiled and embraced him around the neck.

“I still need a damned moment of privacy with my wife so I might kiss her rapturously and find out what color her corset is today.”

I heard the men’s rough guffaws, and felt Mathew wrap me in his arms, and carry me into the woods. I looked over Mathew’s shoulder in time to see all the men, all my men, turn their heads and walk away from wherever Mathew was taking me. We would be given plenty of privacy.

There was so much to say to Mathew, so much I had to confess, but we just sat on a lump of a log, and I wrapped my arms around his neck and cried on his shoulder, while he held me through the continual cannon fire. I heard, even through my own heart’s beating and the cannonade, his heart thumping after mine and felt oddly sleepy as I listened to it.

I finally sniffed and looked up at him; surprised to see that he had a couple tear streaks of his own. He grinned though.

“As much as I wish you to be home and safe, I’m glad to see you, love,” he whispered.

“Mathew.” I squeezed him again. I could only whisper my next words. “I really can’t go home without you. I need you.”

He tugged me away enough to look down at me. I wiped at his tears, but my hands were so dirty I only managed to smudge my gorgeous husband’s face. He smiled as I gave up in my endeavors with a growl and apology for marking his visage. I looked deeply into his light blue eyes, such a similar shade as my sister’s.

“We don’t have much time,” he said. “Our intelligence believes that the Regulars will leave Lexington soon.”

“Intelligence?” I looked up at him quizzically.

“Jacque.” Mathew smiled, but in his face I saw a wisp of pain.

I would never tell Mathew I knew of his conduct regarding Jacque. I would never tell him that I had heard him admit that he knew I had affections for Jacque. It would be a secret in our marriage, but some are best left alone.

“So we march on to Boston?”

“Yes.” Mathew nodded.

“Could I talk you into running away with me, Mr. Adams?” I stole Sam’s line, but I didn’t think he’d mind.

Mathew grinned. “Where shall we go, Mrs. Adams?”

“A sugar island.”

He cocked his head. “The West Indies? Don’t you think we’ll get too hot?”

“Oh, aye, we’d have to take our clothes off every day.”

“Terrible, terrible.” He snickered.

The crack of a cannon whirling into the sky made us clutch onto each other. After the echoing boom silenced, Mathew sighed.

“When we get to Boston, I’d prefer to have you go back home.”

“I cannot leave you, husband.”

“Truly, dear, are you going to be a sniper during this whole affair? What if this battle turns into a war? What if we are to fight for years? You won’t go back home then?”

“Not without you. Perhaps by then I could talk you into going home with me though. I have so much to tell you.”

He kissed my cheek. “Tell me what?”

But I couldn’t. Mayhap I should have, but I just couldn’t force my lips to open and tell him that I wouldn’t die, that I might not be able to have our children, that I was now wholly different. I wanted in that little space of time to believe that our future was what I had envisioned: children and grandchildren, us growing old together.

“How much I love you, of course,” I told him.

Mathew smiled and raked his fingers through his loose blond hair, making the black ribbon at the nape of his neck finally give up on its good fight and release his shoulder-length hair. I ran my own fingers though his silky golden waves, not being able to help myself as I smiled thinking of all the times I’d seen him with his hair untied. Feeling intimate, I snuggled closer to him.

“Good Lord, Lieutenant Whitely will have to seek a commission for you.”

“Good, it’s decided then.”

Mathew gripped around my wrists. “No, it’s certainly not decided. It’s just decided until Boston.”

I frowned at him.

“We’ll discuss what to do after I get my orders in Boston.”

“I won’t leave you, no matter how cross you are at me.”

His shoulders slumped and he gave me a weary grin. “When we get to Boston, we’ll decide what to do. For now, you stay close to Lieutenant Whitely.”